{"id":71954,"date":"2025-08-04T07:40:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-04T07:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=71954"},"modified":"2025-08-04T07:40:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-04T07:40:08","slug":"babington-ashaye-calls-for-overhaul-of-nigerias-tax-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2025\/08\/04\/babington-ashaye-calls-for-overhaul-of-nigerias-tax-system\/","title":{"rendered":"Babington-Ashaye Calls for Overhaul of Nigeria\u2019s Tax System"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Omoniyi David<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Former President of the Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria (CITN) and President of the International Centre for Tax Research and Development, Morenike Tejuade Babington-Ashaye, has called for a complete overhaul of Nigeria\u2019s tax system to address poverty, inequality, and poor governance.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking at the 20th Anniversary Tax Debate of the University of Lagos (UNILAG) Tax Club, Babington-Ashaye warned that the 2024 tax reform, though promising, risks failure if issues like policy flaws, corruption, and weak accountability are not resolved.<\/p>\n<p>She criticised the neglect of taxation\u2019s social benefits, arguing that an effective tax system must ensure better living conditions for citizens, including access to quality education, healthcare, and environment.<\/p>\n<p>She urged the National Assembly to legislate cash benefits for unemployed individuals, the elderly, the physically challenged, and children born to unemployed parents, describing these as basic rights of citizens.<\/p>\n<p>On the theme \u2018The Political Economy of the Nigerian Tax Reform and its Social Implications,\u2019 Babington-Ashaye asserted that tax is the price of lawful citizenship.<\/p>\n<p>She cautioned against excessive tax exemptions, noting that they weaken government\u2019s political authority.<\/p>\n<p>She also urged the government to abandon its \u201ccolonial and military mentality of governance by force\u201d and advocated for the use of mineral resource revenues to directly alleviate household poverty.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPart of the revenue from mineral resources must be shared equally with households for peace, happiness, and prosperity,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Highlighting the loss of about $18 billion annually to multinational tax evasion, she called for stricter enforcement, sector-specific taxation, and the closure of loopholes.<\/p>\n<p>She also blamed inefficiency in the tax system on multiple taxes and poor coordination among revenue agencies.<\/p>\n<p>Babington-Ashaye emphasized the need for transparency and accountability in tax revenue management. \u201cGovernment owes citizens adequate information on what taxpayers\u2019 money is used for.<\/p>\n<p>Budgeting must be for the people, not just ministries and agencies,\u201d she concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Omoniyi David Former President of the Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria (CITN) and President of the International Centre for Tax Research and Development, Morenike Tejuade Babington-Ashaye, has called for a complete overhaul of Nigeria\u2019s tax system to address poverty, inequality, and poor governance. Speaking at the 20th Anniversary Tax Debate of the University [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":71955,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71954"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71956,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71954\/revisions\/71956"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}